Distinctly Montana Magazine

48 D I S T I N C T LY M O N TA N A M A G A Z I N E • S P R I N G 2 0 2 6 predictability and fitful inclemency of Montana weather were among them. A 1913 blight marked the beginning of the end of apple speculation in the valley. The BVRI declared bankruptcy in 1916. The failure of the Como Summer Colony and the Como Orchard may have haunted Wright. It receives only one mention in his autobiography: "Some one hundred and seventy-nine build- ings, as this is written—both large and small—had been built from my own hand by now and are known as this work of mine. About seventy more, the best ones, had life only on paper. The most interesting and vital stories might belong to those chil- dren of imagination were they ever to encounter the field." The planned town in the Bitter Root is mentioned in this context—as an unfinished project that is as interesting, as ambitious as any- thing he actually saw built, and perhaps, as full of pathos. "Wright may have lost the Como Orchard commission before he left for Europe," writes Wright expert Randall Lecocq. The "un- completed Montana utopia" represented a large investment for Wright, "who had possibly put some of his scanty capital, plus untold hours of time and thought, into the venture." Historians might be able to discover more about Wright's ex- act role in the BVRI's plan, whether he was an architect on con- tract, or had been fired; whether he had spent his own money, or whether the BVRI consulted with Wright's representatives during construction, were it not for the loss of an enormous amount of documentation in a 1914 mass murder and fire that would claim the lives of seven people, including Borthwick and her two children. Borthwick and Wright had moved back to America in 1911, and built Taliesin as a refuge from scandal and society. On an Au- gust afternoon in 1914, Julian Carlton, a servant employed at the home, killed seven of the nine people there, including Borth- wick and her two children, John and Martha. Carlton set fire to the house after the murders. Wright had Borthwick buried in an unmarked grave on the property. After all, he had built it for her. In 1923, the Como Orchards closed for good. They were pur- chased and renamed the Montrose-Morello Orchards. The Clubhouse, no longer needed for its intended purpose, was whitewashed and redesigned as a space for orchard workers. The Montrose-Morello Orchards also failed. Two years after that, only eleven years after it burned down the first time, the reconstructed Taliesin burned down again, this time when lightning struck the house during a storm, causing a surge. By the 1930s, Wright had abandoned the Prairie School for a newer, more streamlined style he considered the "architecture of American democracy," Usoniasm, which employed standard- THE MOST STRIKING DESIGN ELEMENT APPEARS TO BE WITHOUT PRECEDENT IN WRIGHT'S WORK: A SEVEN-FOOT-DIAMETER PLASTIC SPHERE POISED IN THE CENTER OF THE GLASS WALL FACING THE GARDEN.

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